Thank you to Mr. Powell for exposing the confusing evolution about gender identity in Marysville schools.

Sadly the confusion is much worse.

Down the hall from the sixth-grade health class the shop teacher has encountered a similar but more serious confusion: the nuts and bolts are experiencing identification meltdown.

In Marysville there has been little opposition to confusing nuts and bolts.

School leaders say that’s because many of the parents who were notified about the gender confusion problems have been busy searching for their largest permanent marker in order to vote no on the next levy proposal.

Flynn Miscall, director of something important, said that the district has adopted the free curriculum endorsed by the Official Office of Preposterous Superintendent Ideas (OOPSI).

Miscall said, “It’s confusing for nuts to be called nuts who don’t feel nuts.”

He added, “Knowledge is a priority” for students and parents. “But we’re just teachers. Who are we to share knowledge about the identity of nuts and bolts?”

The problem of nut-bolt identity has also spread to the school parking lots where the wheels are falling off the educational system, as well as the cars. OOPSI Standards

•Beginning in kindergarten, students will be taught about the many uses of glue.

•Fourth-graders will be expected to “define threaded fasteners and external male threads.” They will learn this is all very screwy.

•High school students will critically “evaluate how culture, media, society and schools have abandoned the harmful expectations of sense and logic.”

Sean Higgins, Marysville

I enjoyed reading the article on the expansion of teaching school kids about gender identity.

I am a non-binary adult who lived in Marysville for 14 years, and this kind of information would have been incredible to know as my younger self.

I got more involved in college by making friends, joining Triangle Alliance and getting involved in diversity events, and so years later it brings me here to point out a couple interesting ways that you were able to describe this change.

“Life can be confusing, especially so if your gender identity is not heterosexual.”

I must emphasize that there is a difference between gender identity and sexuality.

A lot of people in my community describe it as this: sexuality is who you go to bed with, gender is who you go to bed as.

I digress – it is definitely confusing as a youth when you are struggling with your gender identity, and it is equally confusing struggling with your sexual orientation.

“Even though the number of students experiencing gender identity is small, it is important for everyone to learn about acceptance.”

I do wish to point out that even children who are not transgender experience a sense of their gender identity, even from a young age.

Think about the many parents who are raising children who describe them as a total roughneck boy, or a girly girl, and statistically that is likely to be the outcome for those kids as they go through adolescence and childhood.

Not always.

It makes me happy that the school district is so willing to go these lengths not only to understand what their students are going through, but giving their students an opportunity to understand each other.

Thank you for bringing this article to the public, and I have hopes that better changes are still on the horizon.

I hope that you were able to learn a lot too, or at least take away one lesson here: the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity.

Bet Brucker, Everett